1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a waste toner collecting apparatus comprising a waste toner container which is inserted into an OPC drum so that waste toner can be removed simultaneously with replacement of an OPC unit without causing any inconvenience of replacing an additional waste toner container, and a restricted inside space of the OPC drum can be efficiently used.
2. Description of the Related Art
Throughout the description of this specification, a term ‘toner’ will be referred to as a ‘developer’ used in image developing systems.
After being transferred to a developing roller of an image developing system, toner is moved to an OPC drum in general. Then the toner is transferred from image regions of the OPC drum into an image carrier belt.
The toner transferred to the image carrier belt is moved into a print sheet to form an image. On the other hand, the toner attached to non-image regions of the OPC drum remains on the OPC drum as waste toner, which will be removed by a waste toner collecting apparatus.
FIGS. 1 and 2 are perspective views of a conventional waste toner collecting apparatus. As shown in FIGS. 1 and 2, the conventional waste toner collecting apparatus includes a cleaning blade 80 installed in one side of an OPC drum 86 on an OPC unit 81 in a tightly contacting manner, an auger 82 disposed under the cleaning blade 80, and a waste toner container 83 installed under the auger 82 and separated from the OPC unit 81.
The waste toner is separated from the OPC drum 86 by the cleaning blade 80 to drop to the auger 82 by gravity. The waste toner dropped to the auger 82 is transferred toward the waste toner container 83, i.e. toward a shutter 84, along an arrow shown in FIG. 2 by the auger 82, and then drops into the waste toner container 83.
Where the waste toner collected as above fills the waste toner container 83 to be full, a sensor (not shown) informs a user that a quantity of the waste toner fills the waste toner container 83 so that the user can replace the waste toner container 83. The shutter 84 presses an entrance (not shown) of the waste toner container 83 in installation of the OPC unit 81 so as to open the entrance of the waste toner container to receive the waste toner.
In the related art as set forth above, the user is inconveniently required to replace the disposable OPC unit as well as the waste toner container. Also the waste toner container occupies a partial space of the image developing system accordingly increasing a volume thereof as a drawback.
Furthermore, in order to overcome the above drawbacks, recent technologies improving the waste toner collecting apparatus are developed to use an inside space of the OPC drum. However, these technologies only transfer the waste toner into a storage unit disposed inside the OPC drum and then stack the same in one side thereof thereby failing to sufficiently utilize a storage space of the storage unit. These technologies are disclosed, for example, in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication Nos. H10-161503 and H4-127186.